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NVIDIA's Latest CineFX Card Under Linux

Posted by timothy on from the compatibility dept.

Nvidia Lacky writes "Ran across a new article from LinuxHardware.org that goes through NVIDIA's new driver release and also takes a first look at a CineFX-based NVIDIA card, the Quadro FX under Linux. Should be a good read for those that have been frustrated with Linux drivers in the past or that are looking to get a new workstation video card."

15 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. My experiance by insecuritiez · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I did a format and install of RH9 last night and so in the process of getting it all to work, installed the latest nVidia drivers. Since I always run a custom kernel installing them used to be difficult. I can't tell you how surprised I was that nVidia compleatly re-wrote their installer to do all the work for me. It detected a "non-standard" kernel and compiled and installed for me. Smooth. I want to see more companies put that much effort into getting their hardware to work under linux. I wouldn't even concider another vender now unless they could demonstrate the dedicacion to the *nix world that nVidia has.

  2. Nice, but not really a positive thing. by foolip · · Score: 2, Interesting

    While in a practical way it's good that you can enable the Linux kernel and XFree86 to make use of NVidia's hardware, I'm not very thrilled about the fact that NVidia provides this driver.

    Some people seem to believe that these drivers are Free Software (well, they usually say "open source"), simply because you compile the glue between the binary and the kernel, but this is not the case. The NVidia drivers are proprietary software, and it's a problem when a task can only be done using non-free software. Since I (regretably) own an NVidia card, I've had to make the choice between 3d acceleration, or using only free software on my computer. Obviously, I chose the latter.

    So, I would discourage people from using these drivers, and instead support a vendor whose boards do have fully functional Free drivers (these don't have to be provided by the vendor directly). Unfortunately, I haven't a clue as to what that vendor would be.

    1. Re:Nice, but not really a positive thing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      It's called capitalism. All you open sourced communists don't seem to realise the millons companies have to spend on R&D. The driver code is part of that R&D, and has traditionaly been one of Nvidia's trump cards. If you think Nvidia is just going to give away their IP like, you (and all the others like you) need a reality check!

    2. Re:Nice, but not really a positive thing. by Glock27 · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Here's the problem: nVidia and ATI make professional and consumer versions of their cards with the same hardware.

      Yes, and the real problem is that these companies insist on this dichotomy. I'm pretty sure NVIDIA could raise the price on it's consumer chips by 10% and eliminate the "professional" line with no loss of profit. The beauty of this would be (among other things) that consumer apps could use useful pro features like fast line drawing ;-) and fast pixel reads, which are disabled in consumer drivers.

      It has always irked me when chip companies do totally artificial things to boost prices on some part of their line - like making 486 chips with a math coprocessor then disabling it to make "SX" chips. Silly practice.

      --
      Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
      Score: -1 100% Flamebait
    3. Re:Nice, but not really a positive thing. by prisoner-of-enigma · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You might've been right a few years ago, but your comments on the pro and the consumer lines being made "on the same hardware" are no longer correct.

      It used to be that the Quadro lines used the same chip as the GeForce line, and that swapping a resistor (and the BIOS) would turn a GF card into a Quadro. Starting with the GF4/Quadro4 line, this is no longer true. I have a Quadro4 and the chip is most definitely different than the GF4 chip. Further, people have attempted to "hack" a GF4 into a Quadro4, and while they've gotten the driver to recognize the card as a Quadro, the benchmarks clearly show that it is not.

      I'm not sure about ATI's products, but it'd be a cold day in hell when I use their professional card line.

      --
      In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    4. Re:Nice, but not really a positive thing. by Alpha_Nerd · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's very simple to mod a Radeon 9x00 into a FireGL... Just check out nvworld for details This will turn it into the EXACT same thing as a FireGL(only drivers are that one resistor are different)

      Turning a GeForce 4 into a Quadro is also easy, however the antialiasing won't be quite the same...


      I don't see why they used those benchmarks... Measuring the speed of quake for a workstation card is kind of stupid imo.

  3. Competition? by c3rb · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is anyone out there competing with NVIDIA for the linux 3D graphics market? I know ATI released some binary drivers but haven't heard how complete or stable they are. Can anyone comment on this?

  4. My experience... by frodo+from+middle+ea · · Score: 4, Interesting
    To cut the long story short Linux and LATEST graphics boards don't get along together. period
    From my personal experience, I was trying to install RH6/7 about a year and half ago. My video card is ATI All-In-Wonder Ultra Pro AGP. Its a 32 MB card, with TV-Tuner/TV-Out capabilities. It was fairly new at that time as Radon cards were just arriving.

    1) RH installation was in graphics mode, but after that X wouldn't start.

    2) After subscribing to about 3-4 mailing list and about 1-2 months of digging i found that the Chip ID in the card was not compatible , and all that was required was overriding the chipID with that of a previous version of the card.

    3) Then after about anout 1-2 months of digging i was able to get h/w based 3D accl. I recompiled my kernel/ X atleast 20 times during those day.4) Another month to get the TV tuner working.

    I am not a Video Card hacker, but i can compile and install X, Kernel modules etc. But hadn't been for the good folks at http://gatose.sf.net (not goatse :-) ) I wouldn't have beeen able to get it to work.

    So it took about 6 months from the release of the card for me to get it fully working.

    --
    for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
    1. Re:My experience... by (startx) · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Really? that sucks. I bought my gf4ti4600 a few weeks after it was released, popped it in, installed the NVIDIA_kernel and NVIDIA_GLX packages, changed the driver used in XF86Config and X started up beautifully with full hw accel.

    2. Re:My experience... by (startx) · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yeah, I actually asked the lead developer of the ATI's catalyst drivers about Linux support at lanwar 18 (reviewed here), and he blew me off with a "go look at the website, next!" answer.

  5. UT, UT2003, Quake III Arena, shall I continue? by MsGeek · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Tux Racer is hardly the only game you can play natively under Linux. I am not talking WineX here, I am talking native Linux binaries. I would even venture to say that UT (original) runs even better under Linux with the nvdriver than it does on Windows with the Detonator driver. No, it's not free as in speech (it is free as in beer, however) but NVidia wrote an incredibly good driver that works under Linux and FreeBSD. Now if they would only support Linux PPC that would be really nice...

    --
    Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
  6. Re:tux by eyeye · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Nope, it will still be as much fun as a PD Amiga game. Actually they could be quite fun, so its not quite fair ;-)

    Frozen bubble on the other hand is a very nice game, as is nethack. Hmmm... I notice a pattern.

    --
    Bush and Blair ate my sig!
  7. Not so useful by mixmasta · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Benchmarking the new workstation quadro cards with Quake 3 !!! heh hheh.

    This type of card is optimized for giant data sets, zillions of polygons or nurbs at once. CAD/3D Modeling, etc. Think of the golum guy in LOTR.

    Quake 3 has lots of blocky square guys running around at 300 fps on modern machine. Makes about as much sense as benchmarking it with the original wolfenstein.

    This isn't what the card is designed for and it isn't probably going to perform as well as a card several hundred $ cheaper that is.

    So, the review turns out to be not so useful.

    --
    #6495ED - cornflower blue
  8. good review, bad conclusion by halfelven · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Apparently the author thinks only about 3D performance. That's the only explanation for the fact that he recommends the previous drivers over the latest ones.
    The latest drivers fix a lot of issues with 2D performance, which could affect every day usage a lot.
    Moreover, they fix compile issues on several kernel versions.
    If you're desperate after 3D performance and don't care about anything else period, then stay with the previous drivers. Otherwise everyone is encouraged to upgrade.

  9. Re:Surprise, Surprise... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    What's the biggest obstacle between Linux and proper, mature, accelerated 3D from a major vendor?

    Hardware specs. The manufacturers won't give them, or in some cases can't give them because they have contracts with other companies for licensing hardware designs or patents. TV-Out on ATI cards for example, is unsupported because ATI can't give specs because they have a contract with Macrovision. See this thread on gatos-devel where I explained this problem in more detail (Note that I mention Macromedia there, that's incorrect, it's Macrovision as in the analog copy protection we're talking about). But being scared of the competition figuring out how the card works seems to be the main limiting factor.

    Lourens